Connect

Legal News

The BC provincial government has moved to merge the community services and facilities subsector bargaining units. It has introduced Bill 23, the Health Authorities Amendment Act in the Legislative Assembly and given it first reading. The Act, if passed, would merge the industry wide statutory bargaining units into a “health services and support bargaining unit”. It also would merge the parallel associations of trade unions that represent employees in each subsector.

Bill 23 has been introduced at a time when collective bargaining is actively occurring between the Health Employers’ Association of BC and the two largest union associations in the facilities subsector. It would require the parties to enter into merged collective agreements on specified terms. It provides that:

“(1)Each collective agreement entered into for the health services and support bargaining unit by HEABC and the association referred to in section 19.9 (5.1) must consist of the following component agreements:

(a) a master agreement containing provisions that deal with issues common to the facility subsector and the community subsector; (b) a subsectoral agreement for the community subsector containing provisions that apply to the community subsector; (c) a subsectoral agreement for the facilities subsector containing provisions that apply to the facility subsector.

(2) The agreements that constitute the components of a collective agreement under subsection (1) must collectively contain all of the provisions of the collective agreement that are applicable to the employees in the health services and support bargaining unit.”Bill 23 (first reading)